THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE STRATEGIST

By DAVID FIRESTONE

Published: February 8, 2000

COLUMBIA, S.C., Feb. 7—
Senator John McCain has recently been accused by Republican opponents of being a shadow liberal, but no one has ever leveled such a charge against his South Carolina political consultant and the architect of his Southern campaign, Richard M. Quinn.

Where Mr. McCain has policy positions from across the political spectrum, Mr. Quinn is one of the proudest and most vocal conservatives in the South, editing one of the region's most right-wing magazines, Southern Partisan Quarterly Review. Where Mr. McCain has alternately criticized and sympathized with arguments for displaying the Confederate battle flag, Mr. Quinn has helped lead the fight to keep the flag flying over the South Carolina Capitol.

Mr. Quinn's political consulting firm, Richard Quinn Associates, has worked for such candidates as Ronald Reagan, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Pat Robertson. At the moment, however, the company is best known for its work supporting the display of the flag in the face of an economic boycott by the N.A.A.C.P. Several state legislators say the company has conducted private polls that show the flag is widely popular in Republican areas, which have persuaded many lawmakers to keep it flying.

One of Mr. Quinn's longtime associates at the magazine, Christopher M. Sullivan, is also the co-chairman of the South Carolina Heritage Coalition, which organized a large pro-flag rally on the statehouse steps last month. Mr. Sullivan's coalition recently began running television advertisements urging voters and legislators to stand up to liberals who are trying to remove the flag. Mr. Quinn's son, Rick Quinn, is majority leader of the South Carolina House of Representatives, where he has been in the forefront of the effort to keep the flag flying.

''Richard Quinn is a key person in the pro-flag movement in South Carolina,'' said Dwight James, executive director of the South Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. ''He and his son have disseminated a great deal of misinformation to keep that flag flying.''

Mr. Quinn, in fact, is such a polarizing figure around South Carolina that he has stayed in the background to avoid obscuring his client with a long-running Southern debate. He said today that he would not discuss his position on the flag or as editor-in-chief of the Southern Partisan, which he has led since 1984. In a statement, he disavowed some of the more inflammatory articles it has published.

''I am not the working day-to-day editor of Southern Partisan,'' he said. ''My title as editor in chief is purely honorary. Frankly, I do not personally read the articles before they are printed, and I certainly disagree with many of the opinions expressed by others on the pages of the magazine.''

The McCain campaign also issued a statement, saying that Mr. Quinn was a ''highly respected South Carolina campaign consultant'' who had worked for a variety of Republicans, including some now supporting Mr. McCain's chief rival, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.

A look at some of the articles in Southern Partisan shows why it has become the nation's leading journal of the so-called neo-confederacy movement, publishing scholarly treatises, political interviews and commentary that glorify the Southern traditions underlying the secession movement.

In issue after issue, writers in Southern Partisan vilify Abraham Lincoln and other Union leaders, and venerate the rebel soldiers who fought to secede from the United States. The quarterly regularly takes the position that the Civil War was fought not over slavery, but over the preservation of a Southern way of life that to this day is worth preserving.

The magazine rarely writes about slavery, but when it does, its positions are usually not those of mainstream historians. A review of a book on the slave trade in a 1998 issue, for example, includes this passage: ''Mainstream black leaders perpetuate the myth that vicious white slave traders dragged Africans from their idyllic homeland to serve as chattel for arrogant white Americans. Readers of this magazine know otherwise.'' The review goes on to say that white slave traders were often less brutal than the African warlords who traded their subjects for livestock and herbs.

The magazine also weighs in on more contemporary topics. One issue last year criticized The Miami Herald for publishing a special section devoted to news about gays. ''Who knows, maybe Miami will someday be an exclusively gay city,'' the article said.

Many of the articles, however, are more high-minded historical reviews in the tradition of the Southern agrarian movement, which glorified the South's slow-paced traditions of farms and small towns.

''It goes back to Jefferson's ideal of the yeoman farmer,'' said Dr. Blease Graham, an authority on Southern history and politics at the University of South Carolina. ''They venerate the idea of a lost way of life, the intrusion of the fast-food chains and industrialization on the sense of place in the South. Of course, the grand old days for Southern aristocrats were grim days for African-American slaves, and there's no way that can be reconciled.''

''He is actually a thoughtful intellectual with a square head on his shoulders,'' said Dr. Graham, dean of the university's College of Criminal Justice. ''But he has that states'-rights, pro-Southern point of view that some people find disagreeable.''

Mr. Quinn, who often finds himself working for candidates opposed by the state's Republican establishment, has rarely been accused of any kind of personal racism. But several black politicians around the state have said that his association with Mr. McCain could diminish the chances that blacks will support Mr. McCain if they vote in the Republican primary on Feb. 19, which is open to all voters.

''If people realize who McCain is associating with, it could hurt him,'' said state Representative Todd Rutherford, a Democrat from Columbia. ''He's lining himself up with positions that offend people.''